The Spectator’s Notes | 8 June 2017

By the time you read this, the campaign will have drawn fractiously to its close, so here is a strong overall impression drawn from it, which stands whatever the result. Watching a large number of debates and question and answer sessions with party leaders and the public, I noticed, even more insistent than in the past, the righteous tone of the recipient (or would-be recipient) of state money. Whether it was a teacher or health worker, a person on benefits, a young woman wanting her tuition fees paid, or an old man sitting on a house worth (say) £750,000 and demanding that the state bear his putative long-term care needs so that he will not have to sell it, the speaker almost always seemed to possess an impermeable sense of being a virtuous, wronged person. The idea that it is not always good for the state to pay for something, or that there just isn’t enough money to do it, or that the cost may bear heavily on taxpayers many of whom will be poorer than the recipient, seemed to make no impression at all. This is boosted by the dramatic convention, fostered by the broadcasters, that if someone — disabled, unemployed, mentally ill, immigrant, young or very old — complains of personal ill-treatment, he or she cannot be disagreed with. The ugly flip-side of this convention is that the politician who won’t promise them what they want is seen as a bad person — tight-fisted, uncaring, as if it were his own money he was refusing to dispense. I do realise that significant numbers of those complaining have genuine problems for which state help may be beneficial and right. But the way these matters are discussed — on television at least — suggests that the welfare state is extremely bad for the character.